Cooking.

I love cooking. I don't know if many of my friends actually know this, because I rarely cook for people. Especially in dorms, since the kitchen is a good ways away and trying to transport ingredients and supplies and such is a large hassle. Occasionally I cooked in the crock pot, but it just got complicated, so that died out, too. I've probably said it before, though, so maybe they know.

I also love the movie Ratatouille. It's about cooking and much more. I recommend it.

Anyways, ever since I was little I loved cooking. My dad always said, "If you can read, you can cook," and it's true. If you can follow the recipe, you can cook just about anything. My biggest problem is impatience. I don't often like to follow through the whole time it takes to complete a recipe. Also, I can get a little careless in my impatience, and sometimes the slightest alteration of ingredient amounts can ruin a recipe. I've since learned to be slightly more patient and meticulous in my cooking.

I love cooking desserts. Nothing is so fun to me as cooking desserts. I spent most of middle and high school making brownies, cookies, cakes, and the like. I spent a Saturday with my Aunt Teresa learning to cook candies, cookies, and fudge once, maybe one of the reasons I like desserts. And it's so dang tasty.

Anyways, I had cooked actual meals on occasion, but last summer I really decided to get into cooking meals. I spent most of the summer experimenting with recipes I found online and ideas I created on my own, and learned both some great meals and recipes which I have decided never to even look at again. I like stir-fry the best. And I think casseroles are interesting. I think probably because the foods we ate growing up rarely were in these categories. One of my favorite stir-fry meals was yellow rice and chicken and vegetables, something which Dustin also enjoyed. However, nobody liked my attempt at some sort of marinade chicken. Either way, I enjoyed trying and learning, and enjoyed the trips home where I could again cook.

Of course, upon returning home this summer, I decided to begin cooking again. Mom cooked alot for Dustin and me, but sometimes when Dustin was hungry or I hadn't eaten, I'd cook a few meals.

Today, at work, Dustin said, "I want to try making sesame chicken." Or something along those lines. So, during lunch, I looked up a recipe, wrote down the ingredients, and we went grocery shopping after work. We needed bread, milk, and some other foods for packed lunches anyways. We called Mom and asked her to cut up and bread some chicken.

We tried the recipe. It was terrible, and we had wasted half of the chicken in it. However, the Gills do not give up so easily. We took this into consideration and decided to give it another go.

We all gave input on tweaking the recipe, and tried again, with three pieces of chicken this time. Dustin sprinkled the sesame seeds on top, and we all tried our piece. Well, Mom watched Dustin and me to judge the edibleness, while we were the guinea pigs to our creation. Better, but not at all good. I had put way too much red pepper; it would have been good otherwise. So, we split up. Mom went to the internet to look up different recipes, calling out random ingredients for us to consider, and we all created our own sauce. Mom's had ketchup. Dustin's had alot of everything; he decided to mix ingredients until the sauce turned what he deemed the correct color. I merged two different recipes from online and hoped for the best. We kept this up until we ran out of honey.

We all sat around the kitchen table, which held numerous cereal bowls full of sauces, ranging from light brown to burnt red-orange to darkish brown, all topped with sesame seeds. We dipped chicken in the different sauces, trying all of them slowly. Mine failed, again. Mom's... I wouldn't try Mom's, because it smelled too much like ketchup. Surprisingly, the winner was Dustin's batch. It didn't taste like he intended, but it was quite edible, which was a welcome change. Unfortunately, we have no idea how he created it. Or if we would even want to duplicate it.

In the end, we all left the kitchen, no longer hungry, even though barely any food had actually been consumed.

I'm glad we tried.